Cutting School

Wow - this book was amazing. I love books that teach me more about my privilege and place in this world, and "Cutting School" by Noliwe Rooks did just that. This book describes segregation that schools still face in today's society. This book discusses the financing behind and how the education system "benefits" from segregation, all whilst undermining and ignoring black and marginalized voices in the classroom. I loved the conversation surrounding the transformation of the classroom from privatization to public education, and the parallels between The New Jim Crow did for the prison industrial complex, mass incarceration, and the war on drugs. 5/5 stars on goodreads. I highly recommend this book.

3.5 stars

“The road necessarily traveled to achieve freedom and equality in the United States leads directly through public education”.

Noliwe Rooks provides a well-researched look into the fallacy of equal opportunity in public education in the United States, arguing that the current move toward privatized educational systems is benefitting investors at the cost of low-income, minority students – a system that Rooks coins as “segrenomics.”

The book covers the historical record of educational segregation from the de jure segregation of the post-reconstruction era to the de facto segregation of post-Brown v. Board of Education to the present day. Rooks uses each chapter to critique current market-based trends in education, including Teach for America (and its international partners) and the ever-growing system of charter schools, and address policy institutions like “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top”, arguing that most of these initiatives have led to greater disenfranchisement and less educational improvement for minority students while lining the pockets of the market - a lot of people are getting rich off of minority students failures.

There are plenty of galling accounts in this book – most notably, the many stories Rooks details of parents of minority students paying incredibly steep prices for “stealing:” a better education for their children (eg. Enrolling their children under a false address), and the fact that some school systems actually incentivize parents to rat one another out. Reading these accounts is infuriating and truly hits home how racist and classist and utterly messed up is the system that educates America’s children.

At the end of the day, the book is an excellent primer on the subject of inequality in education in America, and how that inequality is made worse as more money is siphoned from the public school system to free-market educational initiatives. It does feel a bit like Rooks scratches the surface in some areas and ignores others (ie. how the system disincentives educators or attracts less than ideal candidates through low pay and overall value of educators in America). But this is such a necessary subject and I am glad to see Rooks has compiled an easy to read overview of some of the more egregious aspects of our current education system - for further reading, there is also the work of Nikole Hannah-Jones (whom Rooks cites many times) and the excellent 1619 Project.

We need more of this type of work on this subject. We need to shout it from the rooftops until the system changes (and Betsy De Vos is fired!). Our children depend on it.

Thank you netgalley and The New Press for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.